The Way Ahead

Chapter 91a: Eightfold Strategy

Chapter 91a: Eightfold Strategy

There was something thrilling about willingly going into a dangerous situation prepared for anything. It reminded Edwin vaguely of the build-up to a rollercoaster, a hint of adrenaline spiking his bloodstream and shutting down extraneous bodily functions. If he turned his Perception inwards, he could actually feel his body directing blood to his muscles and away from his digestive system.

I want to try and do this on my own, he told Inion, who was poking her head over the side of the cart, Im not going to get sloppy like I did with that one bandit. I genuinely want to see how well I can handle myself.

She shrugged, Kay, but if you get badly hurt thats on you. Only so much I can do this far from water anyway.

Do you need to do something about that?

Hm? Nah, its fine. Doesnt hurt too much, basically just itches.

While ostensibly still steering the cart, Edwin left his stick sitting next to his hand and an array of alchemical weapons inches from his other. All he needed to do was figure out what danger was present, and hed be all set for a proper alchemist strike. His first instinct, his firevine cocktail, was no fireball but it would do. He also made for himself a helmet out of solid apparatite, leaving only a tiny slit by which he could breathe out of.

Edwins carriage rumbled along, and his eyes landed on the scene in front of him, immediately letting him know that he was right to be on guard. It wasnt quite a massacre, but there was a lot of blood. From the looks of it, a group of four had been traveling along the road, only to be set upon by something. Bandits, maybe?

No not quite. All of their possessions seemed to be basically untouched, which wouldnt match if theyd been killed by robbers. An animal, then?

Edwin disembarked from the carriage and signaled for Bill to wait while he investigated the bodies. Even the birdsong faded away as he got closer, the somber mood extending even to the wildlife.

None of them- one halfling, two humans, and something that looked like a human but didnt register as one to Almanac- were slain by a weapon Edwin recognized. Or maybe, he realized, they were stabbed by needles and then allowed to bleed out. That was what Anatomy was telling him, anyway. What sort of creature killed like that?

Heck, what kind of creature killed its prey and then just let it sit out? They must have been killed some time ago unless they all died without a sound, which seemed unlikely

Edwin straightened as fast as he could, head whipping around as he prepared to confront

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Just the silence.

Was he being paranoid? He didnt think so, but he cast furtive glances at the surrounding woods while he rapped upon the stone path with his stick. If he was lucky

Nope. Not lucky.

The stick struck the stone without so much as the faintest clack, as Edwins suspicions were confirmed. Whatever was here, whatever was responsible for these deaths was still here, and it was dampening all sound to the point of near silence. He was literally deaf to whatever threat might be lurking nearby. What sort of creature was he dealing with, and what had he gotten himself into?

Edwin pulled out his firevine cocktail, ready to throw it at a moments notice

A blur of motion caught his eye, and Edwin leapt out of the way as a barrage of reddish-purple quills flew through the place hed been standing just moments before. Tracking them back to their source, Edwin didnt see anything

Until he unleashed a blast of Identifies, anyway. Then he at least found out what he was fighting, even if he couldnt see it quite yet.

The spider rushed at Edwin once more, and he finally got a chance to really study it. The bottom side of the spiders abdomen was free of the glowing violet hairs that shimmered across the rest of its body. Seemed a bit odd, given its size, but he wasnt going to complain. While no giant glowing eye, it was, hopefully, still a weak spot.

Now, what would he use to hit it? He doubted that poking it with a stick would do much, and most of his arsenal probably wouldnt be too effective or he could try his firevine cocktails again, and hope that it could only extinguish itself where it had hair? Or maybe it would recoil again and Edwin could throw a rock at it or something. He did have some apparatite crystals pre-made for that exact purpose, after all.

Okay. So, grab a cocktail and set it off against the underside of the creatures abdomen. When it recoiled backwards, hed take one of his crystals and throw it at the section between its abdomen and main body, whatever that was called. With luck, it would be enough to penetrate through its exoskeleton and he could go from there.

The monster lunged at Edwin again, and landed with all eight legs skittering across the ground, trying to hit Edwin. Fortunately, he was outside the creatures (admittedly massive) reach, and was able to easily dodge even further away with just a tug on Longstrider.

With the creatures next lunge, Edwin led the beast further away from the treeline and more onto the stone road. He didnt want to set the forest on fire, after all. As it approached close enough there!

A solid underhand lob of his weapon brought it slightly off-center of the spiders body, breaking open perfectly and igniting the underside of the monster in a massive fireball. Edwin triumphantly waited for the spider to rear back again

Instead of standing on its back legs, the spider hissed again, and the violet hairs seemed to vibrate. Within moments, the screeching had completely stopped, the sound vanishing alongside all other ambient noise in the area, just like the monster had been doing when Edwin had first approached the area. If that werent bad enough, the light around the monster began to shimmer and become hazily obscured. Within a few seconds, the spider was a shadowy blob. Fortunately, it didnt become invisible, but it still made it hard for Edwin to properly track the creature.

Annoyingly, it extinguished his fire as well. Great. There went that plan, and that hypothesis. He couldnt even properly throw his apparatite rock because of how shadowy and murky the spider was! No way he could pull off a precision attack when it was like that.

Okay, so what was plan B? There had to be some other great weakness that he could exploit. It was just so big, there had to be something.

Hmm. Square-cube law?

It was commonly known that spiders and ants were absurdly stronger, proportionally speaking, than a human. Except, that wasnt actually a product of their biology, but rather the result of their size. Anything that small would be much stronger proportional to their anatomy than something of a larger size, and that was pretty much entirely based on the mathematical principle that was the square-cube law.

While magic may have messed with it somewhat, the basic premise should hold. Muscle, being functionally two dimensional, squared in size as a creature became linearly larger- length and width of the tissue expanded. However, volume of both the creature and their surroundings were all cubed- height, length, and width all expanded.

Thus, it might be more accurate to say not so much that smaller creatures were stronger, than it would be to say that everything around them was way, way lighter. Lifting ten times their body weight simply wasnt as impressive at those scales.

All that was to say, the massive spider in front of him was definitely on the wrong side of the square-cube law. The fact it could even exist was already something of a violation- the respiratory system of arachnids couldnt scale to those sizes- but Edwin wagered whatever magic allowed it to exist didnt extend too terribly far. Even from an evolutionary standpoint, why would an ambush predator that was already the size of an elephant need to be magically strong as well? No, much more likely that it couldnt take that much more weight.

So the update to the make it fall possibilities was squish it. It was probably easier than the others, if nothing else, and had the benefit of reminding Edwin of squishing a spider with a newspaper. He could drop his carriage on it perhaps, but that was an awful idea for so many reasons.

A gleam caught Edwins eye from where the fallen travelers lay. The one not-human of the group had a sword. It was still sheathed, and the hilt was somewhat obscured, but it might still work. He may not have any actual training with a sword, but he didnt exactly need it for a direct weapon, did he?

Two steps with Longstrider later and the blade was in his hand. It wasnt anything too special, but it looked well-made enough to serve Edwins purposes. He dodged out of the way from the spider attacking him once again, and a halfhearted attempt of swiping at its legs later, he was by the tree line.

Hed never tried something quite like this before, but Edwin had made sure to pick a tree large enough around that he could feasibly pick it up, but not so large that its diameter was longer than the meter or so his sword was.

The spider lunged at him, but Edwin dodged out of the way and the monster vanished back into the undergrowth. He prepared for its return, but was caught off-guard by, instead of a lunge, a volley of violet hairs being shot at him. There was a Skill involved, he could see, but it looked more like one for accuracy rather than a give yourself the ability to shoot hairs as a projectile Skill, and wasnt that something of a scary thought, that this was just something it could do naturally?

The quills slammed into an unprepared Edwin, seeming to burn as much as cut their way into his gear with a hiss while he looked on in horror.